Echoes of Angels
by Jaded Expression of Euphoria
Summary: Murphy contemplates what home is. Interpret how you like.


**Story Title:** Echoes of Angels (Who Won't Return)

**Rating:** PG

**Chapter:** 1/1

**Warnings:** Character dead, sad, un-beta-ed

**Disclaimer:** _If_ I owned _The Boondock Saints_ Greenly would be secretly flaming and Murphy would have *We're sorry. Due to the graphic nature of this content the following has been removed* to Conner.

**Summary: **Murphy contemplates what home is.

**Synopsis:** _Flowers watched him, standing guard over their names._

**Pairings:** slight Conner/Murphy in my head, you can interpret it how you like

**Jaded's fore-words:** Something I wrote over the summer during a Boondock Saints binge. I got inspired by "past the places where you used to learn," "listen and wait for the, echoes of angels who won't return," and the chorus of the song "Everything You Want" by Vertical Horizon. So I just started typing and this is what came about.

Enjoy.

* * *

Home.

Murphy was back on the Emerald Isle.

Back to seeing green everywhere. Back to drinking around familiar faces. Back to living in the house he grew up in. Back to seeing familiar sights.

By every meaning of the word he should have been back home.

But by Murphy's definition of home, he was lost.

Home was where Conner was. Home was having Conner in the same room or an arm's length away.

Murphy wasn't home without Conner.

Conner was gone.

Conner had left him behind. Abandoned him. Gone somewhere Murphy couldn't follow, couldn't find him.

Murphy wanted to hate his twin for doing it, but he couldn't.

He wanted to hate God for making it so they parted.

He couldn't do that either.

He could cuss in seven different languages. And drink himself to sleep. Which only made drinking suck.

He could stop thinking. And stop truly living.

He could wander around at all forsaken hours of the night to any place his feet took him and think without really thinking so he wouldn't have to really feel.

Like he was doing as he thought about all this with a numbed kind of sadness.

He wandered along a road he'd walked down once with reluctant purpose in the past.

He wandered through kept grass and stones.

He wandered past names and dates and memoriam.

Flowers watched him, standing guard over their names.

Murphy stopped and kneeled in the grass in front of a tombstone.

Fairly under decorated.

Just a name.

And a date.

And three words.

All under a simple cross.

In the top right corner of the stone a nail was carved out of the rock.

Murphy removed his rosary and hung it there.

Then he traced the name.

Conner MacManus.

He skipped the date and one word.

Son.

And instead placed his fingers over the word that meant the most to him.

Twin.

The word in the middle. Twin: two pieces of one whole. Fraternal because they needed to be opposites.

Murphy left his fingertips on the stone and closed his eyes to pray about everything in his head.

He missed his brother every day.

He'd tried to move past it.

He'd tried to live.

It hurt.

He needed his twin. His opposite.

Tears leaked from under his eyelids and slid down his face.

The moon was gone and stars glittered far away in the inky black nothingness above.

Murphy opened his eyes after a breathed 'Amen' and his fingers moved to the right.

He traced an S. And he remembered when it'd been decided to include the word.

He traced an A. He remembered wanting to take a knife and scratch it out.

He traced an I. He _had_ tried to. Brought a knife to the funeral, and stayed after the coffin had been buried too.

He traced an N. He remembers how instead he'd stuck the knife in the ground and left it. He'd been so pissed off, but so uncertain.

He traced a T.

Saint.

He'd left the word because it had an almost blasphemously ironic feel, carved on Conner's gravestone.

He left it because it fit.

Murphy pulled his rosary back on, stood, and left.

His hands were in his coat pockets and his head was ducked as he prayed to die.

Because Murphy wasn't home until he was back with Conner.

In God's hands or in the flames of hell.

* * *

**Jaded's after-words:** I don't really have anything to add here. You all know the drill. Drop a review if you're reading this. And if you're too lazy to review, just tell me something interesting. (Question of the story is "Where's Waldo?" Get creative if you answer.) I am now going to take two allergy pills to help my nose and knock myself out. G'night.


End file.
